Search

The latest edition of Tracing Your Roots from BBC Radio 4 (available via podcast for a limited time) was about family myths and legends. There were four very brief examples, with a short discussion on how each of the stories could be proved or disproved.

This got me thinking about my own family myths and legends and the fact that I don’t appear to have any in my family tree.

I have tried to remember if I was ever told any stories as a child or whether there was anything I wanted to try and prove when I started my research, but I don’t think there ever was. No criminals amongst my ancestors, no stories of relations moving to far off lands and making their fortune, no missing millions waiting to be discovered and I didn’t think I might have been descended from the illegitimate child of some distant King or Queen.

Plenty of mysteries and puzzles have turned up since I started researching, like why did my grandfather end up at school in London, but nothing actually from the start that I wanted to prove or made me start researching my family tree.

I suppose there is only one myth that I had and that was one that I created soon after I started researching. I rather foolishly believed that my ancestors and relations were not very interesting and never did anything unusual. How wrong could I be!

Was there a particular family story that you wanted to prove that got you started in family history research, or was it just general curiosity?

Hi John,
I was lucky enough to appear on Tracing Your Roots in 2008 as my grandfather had written a small account of a journey to russia at the end of WW1 with Ernest Shackleton. It was a fantastic experience.